Dave-H

Well, M$ is never clear in documentation. Fixed, re-download. Thank you Tihiy! :thumbup Works fine now. Now that's what I call service, you're a star! (As well as a genius of course.......)

Any feedback on this Tihiy?

Me again Tihiy! Just another query, this time agout your GDI+ thumbnails. They seem to work fine, and I'm very impressed with the thumbnails from movie files! I have a lot of Quicktime movies on my system, and some produce thumbnails and others don't, even though the movies use the same codec, which is slightly puzzling. Anyway, my main qestion is actually about the size and aspect ratio of the preview thumbnails that appear in Windows Explorer when you select a file. My system used to produce these for image files, as designed, and they were always the correct shape. Now they seem to be a fixed size (set by the parameters in folder.htt) and are always that size, height and width, resulting in many image file previews being very distorted. Is there anything that can be done about that? Sorry to be a pain.

Yes. No. Thanks. I was afraid that you were going to say that!

Hi Tihiy. Just trying out your tools, and I've run into a slight problem with a couple of them. The Task Manager window is cut off at the bottom, and I can only see the top half of the "Description" field, the rest is lost. There seems to be no way of resizing the window or dragging its edges to reveal the missing information. Similarly, the Add/Remove Programs replacement (which is amazing BTW!) has part of its detail cut off on the right hand side. Although you can drag the edges of this window, it doesn't reveal the missing information. I am using large (120dpi) fonts. Is that the problem and is there any way to fix it? Thanks, Dave.

It could indeed be an issue caused by having 1GB or more of RAM fitted, which may be overcome by some configuration tweaks. However it could be the registry size issue which I ran into. Some systems are unhappy if the system.dat registry file gets too big, and won't fit into memory on boot. This seems to particularly be the case if you have certain types of network adapter fitted. To test this, next time it won't boot, try booting into safe mode. This will almost certanly work. Then try going into device manager and disabling your network adapter hardware. Re-boot, and if it now boots successfully, that is almost certainly the problem. If it is the case I can point you at a very long thread to read all about it!

Ah, understood! I don't think that much more than a quarter of my memory is in use if I don't have anything extra running, that's if the Task Manager can be believed, but that is still too much to fit on my drive D: as it is at the moment. It's something I will have to consider the implications of for the future, but I think for the moment I'll look around for other causes without having to do a diagnostic memory dump. Thanks for all the suggestions and information anyway. Incidentally, I just checked my registry settings again, and "CrashDumpEnabled" has set itself back to 0 again! I didn't do that, and I'm sure that I left it set at 1. Would that have been because the system is clever enough to know that it couldn't implement the dump because there isn't enough disk space available? I'd be very impressed if that was the case!

OK, thanks and understood. I don't want to get into resizing my disk partitions just to do a test, but I'll make as big a page file as I can on drive D: and see it that works OK. Does it have to be the only page file, or can it still be split over more than one drive, as the system allows? I could leave my 4GB swap file on E: as it is, and just make an extra 512MB file perhaps on D:, which there is space for. Thanks, that explains it! That's good. My mouse is USB, but my keyboard is PS/2.

Thanks cluberti. I've looked at the article, and I can certainly give it a try. I assume that I need to do the "Memory Dump of the Entire System" option. The others seem to rely on knowing what's actually crashing or hanging, and I don't know that of course! Just a couple of clarifications. How important is it to move my paging file to the same drive where the OS is installed? I have Windows 2000 installed on drive D: (dual boot with Windows 98SE on C:). Drive D: is only a 4GB partition, and although it only has the "WINNT" folder on it (the "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" folders have been moved elsewhere) there is only about 1GB free. This is nowhere near enough for a paging file of the recommended size (I have 4GB of RAM fitted). The paging file is at the moment a 4GB file (the largest possible as I'm using FAT32) on another drive (E:). Also, the "Complete Memory Dump" option isn't there in my System Properties' "Startup and Recovery" options. All I have is "Small Memory Dump" and "Kernel Memory Dump". I looked at the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl" registry key, and the "CrashDumpEnabled" option was present, but set to 0. I have set it to 1 and rebooted, but the "Complete Memory Dump" option hasn't appeared. Thirdly, I see that you have to press a key combination to instigate the memory dump. Is it not very likely that once the system has hung, this won't actually do anything? Sorry to ask so many questions! BTW, I have tried disabling UPHClean, and it made no difference to the problem. Just in case it's relevant, the processes that it's having to forcibly unload are "svchost.exe" and "MsMpEng.exe". The latter is part of Windows Defender.

Thanks guys. When the system "logs off" to a blank desktop, the keyboard is still "live" but no keystrokes actually do anything, including CTRL>Alt>Delete. All I can do is press the reset button on the crate. I do have UPHClean installed, as without it the system would take ages to shutdown anyway (hangs for several minutes on "Saving Your Settings"). That's been the case for a long time. In fact the problem started quite some years ago after I installed one of Microsoft's "Critical Updates". When I queried it with them, installing UPHClean was their answer! I remember thinking at the time that actually fixing the problem might have been a better idea than just installing something to hide it.............. Anyway, I will try disabling the UPHClean service just in case it's causing the logoff problem. It is still puzzling me as to why I can log off and on again once, but not twice! Cheers, Dave.

Sorry if this has been covered before, but I can't find anything directly relevant to the problem I'm having. I am using Windows 2000 SP4, and have until recently been using it for a long time with just a single user profile. Recently I decided to keep an unused profile as a sort of backup which I could use for testing and diagnostic purposes. I now have a profile called "Admin" (the test profile) and a profile called "Dave" (my normal profile). They are both members of the Administrators' Group. The Admin profile was originally a straight copy of the Dave profile, but has now become slightly different of course. There is no software or hardware that is installed on one profile and not the other. My problem happens if I try to switch profiles more than once. If I log on to either at startup, all is fine. If I log off and log on again to the same profile, all is fine. If I log off and log on to the other profile, all is fine. However, if I then try to log off, or restart, the desktop disappears, but insted of giving me back the logon screen, I just get left with a blank desktop with the mouse cursor, and that's it! No matter how long I leave it it never goes any further, and I have to do a forced hardware reboot. This often results in a forced disk check, but is otherwise then OK. Basically, the problem is that I can only log off and on again once. If I try to log off a second time, the system hangs. Anyone come across this one? I do have a lot of what I perceived to be un-necessary services disabled. Have I disabled one too many?

Sadly so at the moment, but there's an awful lot of kudos waiting for anyone who does manage to do it!

Well at least that explains why they weren't offered as ports for the modem! Try scanning for plug and play devices and see if they're now detected. I'm surprised that they haven't been already anyway. If that fails, try adding them manually using the Add Hardware wizard. If the COM ports are now in Device Manager, try the modem install again. With a bit of luck you might now be offered COM 1-4 as options. Try using COM 3 as that seems to be the norm for modems.

Welcome to the Board Richard! What are you actually trying to install? You say "updates". Do you mean MS updates? If you're trying to install other programs, is the install.exe or setup.exe file not showing on the installation disk(s), but other files are?

COM 3 is where my dial-up modem is connected. I think it shares resources with COM 1 IIRC. I'm a bit surprised that only the LPT1 port was offered to you by the setup. Are COM 1 and COM 2 present on your system in Device Manager?

Understood. Thanks for the explanation MDGx.

Hi MDGx, what has changed is that this topic is no longer a sticky in the Important Topics section of the Windows 9x Member Projects Forum. Indeed, that's what I was actually referring to as well!

Thanks MDGx, but I am still puzzled. As you say, the AutoPatcher thread is still in your "Important/Stickified/Pinned" topics list, but it used to also be in the "Important Topics" section at the top of the board. It was its removal from there that I was querying.

Thanks for the update soporific. Glad the project isn't dead. A new version once a year, even if it's only a cumulative update to a permanent final full version (Dec 2007?), would be very welcome. It's not just the patches, important though they are of course, it's the extra enhancements developed by those like yourself which I much appreciate. I realise that you can get most of them individually, often directly from their authors, but having them all in one package is a big advantage. BTW, while you're here, do you know if anyone has managed to modify the Windows 98 Explorer files so that "My Documents" appears at the top of the tree in the left hand pane, as it is on Windows 2000/XP? It has always really annoyed me that it's at the bottom. Why MS designed it like that I cannot understand! Thanks again. Dave.

Can anyone confirm whether this project is still alive? I am concerned that this thread has now been removed from the "sticky" topics on the board........

Here you go - http://rloew1.no-ip.com It's not free, but worth every penny in my opinion. (And no, I'm not a personal friend or relative of Rudolph, just a very satisfied customer!)

Thanks! Of course, it's no longer a "sticky", and has gone down onto page 2 because its last addition was back in February. I should have thought of that. But why isn't it a sticky any more? The other threads that are no longer stickys have been replaced with newer versions on the same or similar subjects. Is AutoPatcher for Windows 98 officially dead then? Say it ain't so!

MDGx, I see you've reorganised the "stickys", but what's happened to the Autopatcher thread? It seems to have just disappeared. Is it presumed dead?

Thanks erpdude8 and many apologies for not acknowledging this for so long! I have looked at the KB article, and as you say, it acknowledges the problem, but doesn't offer any fix. I've looked and cannot find the file for download anywhere. If it were possible for you to post it somewhere where I could grab it I'd be very grateful, as it doesn't seem to be available from MS through any normal mechanism. EDIT: Forget that, found it on the MDGx page, where I should have looked in the first place of course! LATER EDIT: Unfortunately tried it, and version 4.10.2223 still doesn't give me any processor information in the system properties tab, just like 4.10.2224. Just the memory is displayed. This may be because I am using Xeon processors. I'll stick with 4.10.2222, which at least gives a generic processor type display on my system.

Have you tried the MS Update site specifically for Office? http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/maincatalog.aspx It does use ActiveX as all MS update sites do, but if Windows Update works for you, Office Update should as well.